


what moons must do these days

by seeingrightly



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-17 23:44:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17570207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seeingrightly/pseuds/seeingrightly
Summary: Hermann sits in the front row of his classroom. It is hard to see over his classmates’ heads when he sits further back, and it’s a shorter walk to the chalkboard when he volunteers to answer questions, so he would have picked it if he was given the choice, but he was not. This is where his teacher placed him. He gets tripped and hit with paper balls and pencils less, here, also. It’s a good desk to have.When it snows heavily, they stay in the classroom rather than going outside after lunch, and usually on these days Hermann will start his homework, or read, or talk to the teacher. He’s forgotten his book at home today, or else Bastien removed it from his backpack as a prank.“Herr Weber,” he calls.He likes that he can talk to her at her desk without leaving his. It feels secure, and proper. She looks up from her notebook with the same steady look his mother gives him.“Yes, Hermann?” she asks, in the same expectant tone of voice as always, never ready for exactly what he’ll say but always ready for him.“I’m reading a book about moons,” he says.





	what moons must do these days

**Author's Note:**

> this was very annoying to write. thank you to [lindsey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freezerjerky) and [melissa](http://theverytiredgirl.tumblr.com) for listening to me whine and also editing
> 
> title from the blow's "from the future"

 

 

 

Hermann sits in the front row of his classroom. It is hard to see over his classmates’ heads when he sits further back, and it’s a shorter walk to the chalkboard when he volunteers to answer questions, so he would have picked it if he was given the choice, but he was not. This is where his teacher placed him. He gets tripped and hit with paper balls and pencils less, here, also. It’s a good desk to have.

When it snows heavily, they stay in the classroom rather than going outside after lunch, and usually on these days Hermann will start his homework, or read, or talk to the teacher. He’s forgotten his book at home today, or else Bastien removed it from his backpack as a prank.

“Herr Weber,” he calls.

He likes that he can talk to her at her desk without leaving his. It feels secure, and proper. She looks up from her notebook with the same steady look his mother gives him.

“Yes, Hermann?” she asks, in the same expectant tone of voice as always, never ready for exactly what he’ll say but always ready for him.

“I’m reading a book about moons,” he says. “Did you know they’re also called natural satellites? And did you know that our moon is bigger in size compared to Earth than any other moon in our Solar System? The moon is 0.27 times the diameter of Earth.”

“I didn’t know that,” Herr Weber says. “Really?”

She looks back down at her notebook after she asks and picks up her pen again.

“Yes,” he continues, “and they were first called satellites because the Latin word means guard or companion. They accompany their planets through the heavens.”

Behind him, there is a quiet snort of laughter, and then giggling, and then outright laughter. He didn’t know anyone had been listening, and he’s not sure what they find funny. He can’t tell if Herr Weber knows what’s so funny, or if she agrees, based on the stern look she gives the other students until they quiet. Hermann can hear them shift away.

“Did you know that very small natural satellites or minor moons are sometimes called moonlets?” Hermann asks, and Herr Weber sighs and places her pen down again.

- 

On the first day of the school year, once Hermann has moved all of his belongings back into his room, he’s asked to pay the dean a visit. There’s another boy sitting in the chair across from the dean’s desk. He’s small; he looks young.

“Hermann, this is Klaus,” says the dean. “He’s moved here from a different school, and skipping up a year to join your year. I thought you two might get along. You could show him around.”

“Ah,” Hermann says. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

The dean gestures for them to excuse themselves. In the hallway, once the door is shut behind them, Hermann hesitates. He knows, on paper, why the dean would pair them up. On paper, they’re similar. But Hermann can’t imagine he’ll be very helpful.

“Would you like to see the main parts of the campus?” he asks after a few long moments.

“Alright,” Klaus says.

It seems like he’s going to say something else, but then he doesn’t, and Hermann doesn’t either, until they begin to walk. Hermann lists what each building is as they pass; he’s not sure what else to offer. It’s not as though Hermann can provide information about the social goings-on of the school, or offer any funny anecdotes. When they pass the building that includes the astronomy classroom, though, something in his voice or demeanor must change, because Klaus stops walking beside him and speaks for the first time in a while.

“I’ve always been interested in astronomy,” he says. “You take the class?”

“Oh, yes,” Hermann says, “I’ve taken several. They require quite a few advanced prerequisites, so not everyone can get into them.”

Something shifts in Klaus’s expression, and Hermann hesitates. He knows he said something wrong, but he isn’t sure what.

“I’ve taken all of the astronomy classes they offer, actually, but I want to learn more, so they might create an independent study for me,” he tries.

“Great,” Klaus says flatly.

Hermann isn’t sure how to continue. He just wants to share, to talk about something he loves, something Klaus had said he was interested in also, but it isn’t working.

“Should we continue on?” Hermann asks, and Klaus shrugs and starts walking again.

- 

There’s a tap on the doorframe to Hermann’s study room. He finishes typing his email before he looks up. Unsurprisingly, it’s his classmate who was studying in one of the nearby rooms.

“You ready for lunch, Gottlieb?” she asks.

“Already?” Hermann asks, glancing at his computer. “Oh.”

“Typical,” Anna says. “The crew’s going to meet us.”

She ducks back out of the doorway, presumably to grab her belongings. Hermann gathers up his own. He’d rather continue working and eat later, but he’s not given much of a choice these days. He _could_ protest, but it would make things uncomfortable and difficult. It’s easier like this.

Anna reappears and Hermann joins her for the walk to the elevator. As they wait, she shifts her mug back and forth between her hands for a moment, humming, before she speaks.

“You ready for the Calc exam?” she asks, and Hermann makes a considering noise.

“If the subject matter matches the materials we’ve been given to study this time,” he replies, wry.

Anna laughs as they step into the elevator, pressing the button for the first floor.

“Yeah, good luck to us,” she says, and then her phone chimes and she pulls it out of her pocket. “Oh, damn.”

Hermann looks over at her. She puts the phone back into her pocket.

“Dave and Kat broke up,” she says.

Hermann lets out a considering noise. He’s not certain who Dave is, and he hadn’t been certain Kat had been seeing anyone, not that Anna would suspect it. It’s not that he acts interested; he just knows better than to show his disinterest.

“Everyone’s breaking up,” Anna continues. “What about you? You have a secret break-up this week?”

She moves her arm like she’s going to elbow Hermann in the side conspiratorially, but doesn’t actually touch him. There’s a slightly bitter edge to her goofy tone of voice as well. His classmates think it’s odd he doesn’t share personal information, but the rest of his behavior is normal and agreeable enough that he can get away with it. It’s a fine balancing act Hermann’s worked out over the years, a neutral persona he’s built up as he’s learned to navigate social situations, floating along on his own without appearing to do so.

“Not me,” Hermann says in his most agreeable tone, and he leaves the elevator, remembering after a moment to wait for Anna to catch up.

-

In his letters, Newt is passionate and excited and wordy. He doesn’t seem to hold himself back much. But words on a page can only tell Hermann so much about the person he’s getting to know, wants to get to know. He’s curious about what Newt’s voice sounds like, if he talks with his hands, if he has a hint of an accent. He wonders if the energy he reads on the page is there in person to the same degree.

It’s hard to imagine the Newt he sees on paper as being collected or understated in real life, but there’s a selfish part of Hermann that hopes that Newt is only this open because it’s Hermann he’s talking to, because Newt feels the same gravitational pull that Hermann does.

When a Google alert for Newt’s name pops up one day, Hermann follows the link to a video of Newt giving a talk at a conference. He pauses the video instantly, gets up from his desk, and shuts his office door. After a few steps toward his desk, he turns back and locks the door, too. Then, slowly, he goes back to his laptop, readies himself, and presses play on the video.

Hermann catalogues an endless list of little details - the upper register of Newt’s voice, his crooked tie, the many directions in which his hair points, his big boots. What he really focuses on, though, what he can’t look away from, is how uninhibited Newt is as he speaks. Newt certainly isn’t focused on appearing professional, and he ignores the moderator entirely, with a singular focus on getting his point across, not just because he’s right and he knows it but because he’s so interested in what he has to say, because he cares so much, because he can’t help it and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks about that.

It’s not as though Hermann knows all of this for certain, but - he _understands_ Newt, doesn’t he, even if he doesn’t entirely relate to or agree with him, even if they are different kinds of people, they’re also very similar. And they’ve told one another a lot. And he can see in Newt what Hermann buries in himself.

Hermann’s been honest in his letters to Newt. Writing doesn’t require the kind of on-his-toes thinking that personal interactions do, and it’s not difficult for Hermann to represent himself truthfully without the kind of mishaps that usually come with that. But there is still a layer of protection, one Newt doesn’t appear to utilize, completely the same on the page and in this video.

The idea that that’s how Newt lives his life - Hermann didn’t know it was possible, to be this kind of person and _be_ it.

-

Hermann picks his way carefully through the cafe. It’s close to where the conference is being held, so it’s crowded. They should have picked a better spot to meet, perhaps. Newt isn’t tall, he knows, and likely not easy to find in a sea of people like this. Hermann is working his way past a group chatting loudly about Godzilla when a hand wraps around his arm.

He turns around, and Newt is sitting at a table he’d walked right past because he couldn’t see it. His fingers are warm on the inside of Hermann’s wrist. His leather jacket is thrown over the back of his chair. He’s leaning back, one leg crossed over the other, only able to pull off such a casual pose in the amount of room he has because he’s on the smaller side.

“Newton!” Hermann says.

It’s loud, but he thinks he may have shouted even if it wasn’t. He’s nervous, and excited, and feels a bit out of his own control, but more than that he knows he doesn’t have to be _in_ it. This is Newt, uncontrolled and bright and right in front of him. He slides his arm so that his hand is in Newt’s instead for a moment - it’s awkward, his left hand in Newt’s right, certainly not a handshake - and after squeezing briefly, he lets go to grab the closest chair and sit down next to Newt.

“Hermann!” Newt says, raising his voice as well. “Buddy! Good to see you. You know, actually see you.”

Newt uncrosses his legs and leans forward in his chair, rests an elbow on the table. Hermann finds himself leaning in as well and doesn’t stop it.

“Yes, yes, you as well,” he says. “I’m so looking forward to watching your presentation later today, Newton. I’ve been told that reading about your work doesn’t compare to experiencing your talks.”

“Oh, that,” Newt says, laughing and waving a hand, looking out across the cafe. “Come on, man, you’ve been to one talk at these kinda things, you’ve been to ‘em all.”

Hermann frowns before he can stop himself. There’s no way that’s something Newt actually believes.

“Do you not want me to go?” he asks, because he never does anything but get right to his point with Newt.

Newt looks back at Hermann quickly, his eyebrows jumping up his forehead, before he looks down at the table and spread his arms, shrugging.

“Man, it’s whatever,” he says, slapping his hands down onto the table and then drumming them with what Hermann is sure is nervous energy. “You probably have nerds more relevant to your field to watch.”

“Newton, if you don’t want me to go, I won’t,” Hermann says. “I want to, but I won’t, if that’s what _you_ want.”

Newt stills, and then he cringes, and Hermann wonders if he’s embarrassed about being nervous with Hermann, or if it was some kind of misstep on Hermann’s part. Isn’t it usually on Hermann, after all? Maybe Newt wasn’t ready for him, what he’s really like, in person. Maybe Hermann shouldn’t have been this way with him after all.

But then Newt coughs and shifts, recalculates right before Hermann’s eyes, changes his body language to something more intentionally relaxed again.

“Hey, you can do what you want,” he says, still not making eye contact. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

That’s a lie if Hermann has ever heard one; everything about Newt right now is a lie. It’s all bravado, a front. He won’t be himself around Hermann - because he doesn’t trust him? Because he wants to diminish their similarities? Whatever the reasoning, it’s undeniable and it’s _painful_.

“You’ve made your point very clear,” Hermann says, as coolly as he can, and then he grabs his cane and stands.

Newt jumps in his seat and tilts his head back to stare at Hermann, his mouth open slightly.

“What -” he starts to ask, but Hermann doesn’t wait for the rest of the question.

It’s all too clear to Hermann what this version of Newt would be to him, if he stayed, and what Hermann would be to this version of Newt. There might be a poetic appeal to orbiting one’s love, but Hermann isn’t interested in companionship that’s not wholly reciprocal.

- 

Hermann isn’t sure why he let Newt drag him to this J-tech party; he knew Newt would end up mingling with people uninterested in talking to him and that he himself would end up in a chair in the corner alone.

“You sure you don’t want anything to drink?” Newt asks for a third time as he gets ready to leave Hermann.

“I have told you countless times, I do not wish to -”

“To uninhibit yourself around colleagues,” Newt interrupts in his awful impression of Hermann. “Yeah, okay, Hermann. I get it.”

“Must you call me that in front of others?” Hermann asks, and Newt stops in his tracks, a few feet away.

“In front of _who_?” Newt asks. “Everyone’s all the way over there.”

He throws up his arms and then leaves. Hermann watches as Newt orbits from one group to the next, drink in hand. It’s horrible, in a way Hermann can never bring himself to look away from, whenever Newt tries to socialize like this; Newt cares so much about how others perceive him, and it makes Hermann furious with himself. This isn’t the kind of person he thought Newt was, before they met. The version of Newt who he was inspired by, who he had feelings for, isn’t the person he works with every day.

It’s not at though it matters anymore, though; Hermann hardly has the time to care what others think of him as long as they respect his professional opinion and allow him to prevent the end of the world. The fact that Newt seems to care about the opinions of everyone except Hermann is something he also doesn’t have time to think about.

He can’t avoid it, though, when Newt sits down next to him with two cups of water and passes one over, sliding off his leather jacket now that he’s in a dark corner. He wipes his hair and the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand before taking a sip and leaning back in his chair, slouching like all the tension is gone from his body at once.

There is something to the fact that Newt always comes back to Hermann, like he can’t pull away for too long, but Hermann suspects that more than anything it’s the result of habit, an ebb and flow born of too much time in the same pattern.

“Man, I’m too old for this,” Newt says. “Same kinda bullshit that happened at college parties I went to when I was 15.”

Hermann could ask why Newt came to the party, then, but he doesn’t.

“What kind of bullshit?” he asks instead, and Newt smiles at the repetition of the curse, like Hermann knew he would.

“All anybody wants to do is tell stories behind each other’s backs,” he says. “Not talk about anything interesting. Plus it’s not like I’ve got stories to contribute.”

Hermann gives him a look over his own water.

“I’m sure you do,” he says, and Newt startles him by knocking their knees together gently.

“Nah,” he says, “none I’m gonna tell to these people. What happens in K-science stays in K-science, right, Hermann?”

It is so difficult for Hermann to reconcile the Newt he saw in letters and on his computer screen with the Newt who tries to impress everyone else in the Shatterdome with the Newt who sits next to him every day like it’s nothing. Especially when their interactions are so far from casual for Hermann.

“Yes, except for when it happens loudly enough that the rest of the Shatterdome can hear it,” Hermann replies after a moment. “Though I’m sure those stories are being passed around already.”

Newt smiles as he looks out across the party, and Hermann feels something warm unfurl in his stomach, something that only happens when he has a positive interaction with Newt, when Newt enjoys something Hermann said or did.

He can’t blame Newt for not seeing the effort Hermann puts in with him and no one else, not when these moments would seem so minor, so simple, to anyone else, but he still wants to.

- 

There isn’t much time to think about the consequences before Hermann announces that he’s going to drift with Newt. He puts on the headset and gets into position and only has a moment to think about all of the things he doesn’t want Newt to see and all of the things he _does_ want Newt to see before the button is being pushed.

That’s the thing about performativity: Hermann wants so much to protect himself, but at the same time, he wants someone to see through it all, to see what he really is, whatever it is that he can’t fully understand himself, and to love him for it. He wants that someone to be Newt, and he has for many years.

And now Newt is going to see it all. Hermann is letting him.

There isn’t time, before Newt pushes the button, to consider that Hermann is going to see all of Newt too. But Hermann does, in bright flashes he somehow understands instantaneously: Newt getting bullied as a child alongside Hermann, Newt knowing when he’s done something wrong but not knowing how to fix it as he got older, Newt figuring out how to make himself more palatable and feeling conflicted about whether or not he should do it.

Also, though, there’s Newt wanting so desperately to be liked, much more than Hermann has ever cared about it, much more insecure than Hermann has ever been. There’s Newt trying on different personas to cover up his nerves, trying to make himself seem older, trying to impress - trying to impress _Hermann_ when they first met, so scared he wouldn’t meet expectations.

And then there’s Newt growing comfortable with Hermann as they worked together, the only time he didn’t feel any pressure to pretend to be someone else, side by side with Hermann. It’s there, loud and clear, in the memories that surge through Hermann - Newt wishing he was as unafraid to be himself as Hermann. Newt’s longtime admiration for him, Newt’s love for him - it’s almost as jolting as the sharp turn his mind takes into the precursor hivemind, swarming and chattering and inhuman.

For the first few moments after the connection severs, Hermann can’t focus on anything but his body’s response, and then the information they so urgently need to deliver to the Shatterdome, but then they’re seated side by side in a helicopter with nothing to do but wait.

“Man,” Newt says after a few moments, just loud enough to be heard in the back row of the helicopter. “The human psyche is a trip.”

Hermann huffs out a laugh that does nothing to ease his nausea.

“All that time you thought I was simply being myself,” Hermann says, shaking his head. “I never thought I was. There were so many more layers to how I saw myself and my choices.”

“I don’t think that means I was wrong, though,” Newt says. “All those layers of you are you. Shit, I sound like a freshman philosophy student -”

“No, I know what you mean,” Hermann says. “It doesn’t seem like it’s done us much use to view different elements of ourselves and one another as separate, rather than parts of a whole.”

“One whole or two?” Newt asks, and when Hermann looks over, there’s a crooked smile on his face, though it turns quickly into a grimace. “That wasn’t innuendo.”

Hermann sighs.

“I think we’ve also done one another a great disservice,” he continues.

“Only one?” Newt interrupts, and Hermann glares at him. “Fine, what?”

“Assuming our perceptions were correct,” he says. “Not allowing one another to be as multifaceted and complicated and confusing as ourselves.”

“I thought you were plenty confusing,” Newt says, “but I get what you mean. I gotta remember you’re just as confused by you.”

“Precisely,” Hermann says with as much dignity as he can muster.

“I, uh,” Newt says, “I am feeling significantly less confused about one specific thing.”

He bites his lip, though, and doesn’t continue, so Hermann reaches out to take his hand on the seat between them.

“Oh, good, you too then,” Newt says weakly. “Cool.”

“Yes,” Hermann says, and then, because he knows it will make Newt laugh, he repeats, “Cool.”

After a moment, a smile still on his face, Newt leans in a little closer, so he doesn’t have to speak as loudly.

“I do love you,” he says. “All of you. The parts of you that neither of us understand, and the ones I’ve known about forever, and the ones I just learned, about and the ones I don’t know about yet.”

Hermann freezes up, for a moment certain that Newt must be mocking him, but he makes himself turn his head to look at Newt, at the soft expression on his face, one Hermann hadn’t seen before seeing it in his memories.

“I mean it,” Newt says, and Hermann feels as though something inside of him that has always been locked up tight is released.

“Once we save the world, Newton,” he says, his voice wavering, “and once I’ve brushed my teeth, I am going to kiss you until we fall asleep or our mouths fall off.”

“Oh,” Newt says, grinning. “Deal.”

“I love you,” Hermann says belatedly. “Every version of you.”

Newt’s smile wobbles, and then he brings Hermann’s hand to his mouth and kisses the back of it, effectively hiding most of his face for a moment as he recovers.

“You know I took a bunch of astronomy classes because of you?” Newt asks suddenly. “Mostly so I could write songs about you.”

“Did you?” Hermann asks, a smile spreading across his face unbidden. “Were they any good?”

“Nah,” Newt says. “Funnily enough they relied on a lot of imagery of me being the moon orbiting around you.”

“Why is that funny?”

“Because I saw memories of you thinking the same kinds of things about me,” Newt says, “but we were both wrong. I just don’t know what to replace it with.”

“Why do you need to?” Hermann asks, narrowing his eyes. “Are you planning to write me a new song?”

“Maybe,” Newt says with put-on defensiveness. “You got any suggestions?”

Hermann looks down at their interlocked fingers and pulls Newt’s hand so that it rests against his thigh. It’s been some time since he’s let himself focus on anything but his work, since he let himself indulge in such romantic thoughts, but he still knows the answer quickly.

“We’re a binary asteroid system,” he says. “Two asteroids that orbit a shared center of mass. They don’t orbit one another, exactly. And they’re usually different sizes, but sometimes they’re the same, traveling through the heavens together as equal companions.”

Newt leans in and rests his chin on Hermann’s shoulder.

“Sap,” he says.

“You _started_ it,” Hermann scoffs, and Newt laughs, leaning more fully against him.

The pilot announces, then, that they’re about to land.

Hermann looks out the window at the Shatterdome as they decline. So, so soon, he and Newt will finally do their part in saving the world. And then their lives can really begin, and they can figure out which new versions of themselves to become, separately but in unison.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twitter at [coralbluenmbr5](https://twitter.com/coralbluenmbr5) and tumblr at [ch3ry1b10ss0m](http://ch3ry1b10ss0m.tumblr.com)


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